Objectives <p>Emotional eating is a widespread maladaptive coping strategy that may increase the risk of clinical eating disorders. The current study aimed to examine the effectiveness of a brief, dual-component mindfulness-based intervention in mitigating acute emotional eating among a non-clinical sample of young women.</p> Method <p>In this study, female undergraduate students (<i>n</i> = 121) were randomly assigned to a mindfulness group, a distraction group, or a control group after negative emotion induction. The mindfulness group practiced mindful breathing followed by mindful eating of a small snack, while the distraction group consumed the same snack while watching a video clip, and the control group consumed the snack only. All participants then completed an <i>ad libitum</i> eating task.</p> Results <p>The mindfulness group consumed significantly fewer calories than both the control and distraction groups, <i>F</i>(2, 118) = 21.35,&#xa0;<i>p</i> &lt; 0.001. These effects were partially mediated by reduced negative emotions, <i>β</i> = -0.16,&#xa0;<i>p</i> = 0.02. Furthermore, during and after the mindful eating phase, the mindfulness group maintained significantly higher levels of satiety awareness compared to the control groups, <i>F</i>(2, 118) = 6.38, <i>p</i> = 0.002.</p> Conclusions <p>These findings provide initial evidence that even a brief, integrated mindfulness-based practice can reduce emotional eating, supporting its feasibility as a valuable strategy for subclinical emotional eating and highlighting specific mechanisms for future research.</p> <p><b>Preregistration</b> This study is not preregistered.</p>